Never Ending Tech Woes

Seems like every weekend there's a tech mess to sort out. The hard drive on the newer computer is shot. It took an hour of gabbing with some techie in God only knows what country to figure that one out. He advised me to buy a new hard drive and I guess for a $100 and double the storage it's worth it. Not good timing, what else is new ?

Looks like the government is postponing their move to slash and burn the public service(see previous post). The opposition decided that they would form a coalition to bring down the Tories, if they present the budget on Monday. While other governments are in a spending mood, ours is sticking to what Thomas Walkom in The Star so aptly described as "conservative hobby horses". Small government , the market rules, blah blah blah. Well we all know how that turned out don't we ? Were has our finance minster, Jim Flaherty, been the last six months?

Stephen Harper is the last of the Bushies, I think his days are numbered.


I can't really complain that much though ,after reading about a woman who is losing her job just two years before retirement. The company is packing up and moving to Mexico. What a disgrace these corporations are, that they think it's fine to take advantage of third world countries and pay people dirt wages with no benefits. Why? so the top people can go out and buy more Champagne, diamonds, yachts ? What do they want and when will they ever have enough?
Read the series "The Reckoning" .

I didn't even bother to turn my T.V. on today. I'm so sick of commercials. The same one, twenty times a day, telling me that the detergent in the orange bottle will get my clothes clean. Gee, isn't that what detergent is supposed to do and if it isn't doing that, the company should pack it in. They think their new approach, telling me their detergent has more cleaning ingredients than the "other guy" will get me rushing out to buy it. Nope, especially when my son, who works part time in a pasta factory, tells me that they put the same fresh pasta in containers and just put different labels on them. So the store brand is the same as the name brand. I buy the store brand detergent and it works fine, besides the way I'm feeling, am I really going to cry if my tea towels have stains on them ?

I think perhaps the freezing rain is getting to me. It's going to be an interesting walk to work tomorrow.,

No MS news which these days for me is good news. Have to go trim these fake nails, they are way too long!

3 Forward 2 Back

Had my visit with the doctor this morning. Things are stable right now, although he did say a couple of times that I was an anomaly and something about my leaky blood brain barrier. My EVP tests are slightly below normal, there is protein in my spinal fluid, no change in my MRI, and I have the same proteins in my blood. He said that he didn't think I needed any heavy drugs like interferons. I told him that honestly I wouldn't be interested in doing that anyway and he seemed relieved . I don't know maybe some patients insist on it.
The strategy for now will be to monitor things , treat individual symptoms, and see how it goes.
He also said he would send another letter to my employer about allowing me to tele work, due to my continuing problem with fatigue.

I left feeling not too bad and walked the 15 minutes back to work taking a short cut through the mall, to get out of the cold and wind. Decided to treat myself to a new sweater that was 50 % off. The stores already have pretty deep discounts on things . The mall was busy but I notice people are shopping mostly in the cheaper stores. The dollar store was doing booming business.


Then I get into the office just in time to hear the latest news. The government is proposing to freeze our wages, roll back our current increases, and take away our right to strike.

I made a joke that it was just like working at Wal Mart.

Read /HeardThis One ?

Thanks to my friend Suzanne for sending me this:


The phone rings and the lady of the house answers, 'Hello.'


'Mrs. Sanders, please.'


'Speaking.'


'Mrs. Sanders, this is Doctor Jones at Saint Agnes Laboratory. When yourhusband's doctor sent his biopsy to the lab last week, a biopsy from another Mr. Sanders arrived as well. We are now uncertain which one belongs to your husband. Frankly, either way the results are not too good.'


'What do you mean?' Mrs. Sanders asks nervously.


'Well, one of the specimens tested positive for Alzheimer's and the otherone tested positive for HIV. We can't tell which is which.'


'That's dreadful! Can you do the test again?' questioned Mrs. Sanders


'Normally we can, but Medicare will only pay for these expensive tests one time.'


'Well, what am I supposed to do now?'


'The folks at Medicare recommend that you drop your husband off somewhere in the middle of town. If he finds his way home, don't sleep with him.'

Another Postcrossing Plug

Thanks to all the great members of Postcrossing for brightening up a dismal grey week.
I received a fantastic package from Japan, got a message from a member in Norway thanking me for Christmas goodies, another thank you from a guy in Belarus, and a couple of surprise postcards from France and the U.S.A. Tonight I was busy doing up Christmas cards for a world wide swap.
Postcrossing is snail mail at it's best. Check my Hobbies list if you are interested in joining.

Otherwise I am itchy,twitchy, and having weird pains. I don't know why I'm able to get a perfect score on a grammar and punctuation test and yet hesitate every time I use a comma.

Miscellany

Note to myself : Do not buy anymore clothing that needs lots of ironing, even if it looks good .
I wasted 20 minutes tonight fussing over a blouse. No wonder I hardly ever wear it.
I remember when my mother got her first clothes dyer. How happy she was to be able to eliminate hours of ironing. We missed the fresh smell of clothes off the line, but not too much.

I deleted two of my blogs today. It was distressing to read them and realize that I was repeating myself . I do it on this blog too. Have to try and be more careful in the future and avoid old fogey syndrome .
My son has just handed me his weird list of book requests for Santa ( me). I guess I should be glad he's such an avid reader.

That's it for today not much happening except I did a blood pressure reading at the pharmacy while I was waiting for my prescription and it is very low, almost too low. Perhaps I didn't have my arm in the cuff correctly. I'm going to try again later in the week.

If The Economy Is So Bad, How Come ?

I can't find a Wii Fit anywhere. I've being trying to buy one for three months with no luck. The Wii Sports, is starting to get boring. My son has been to practically every store in Hamilton and Toronto. When Toys R Us, had a sale a couple of weeks ago , he went there and they were sold out. They said they only got eight of them!Yesterday a guy at an electronics store told him that the price is double now due to scarcity, but they stil don't have any. Are they kidding!! ?

I feel like I'm living in some Soviet era country with rationing. Which makes me think of a joke about when a famous Communist leader(can't remember which one) went to hell. The devil asked him if he wanted to go to the Socialist or the Capitalist hell. When asked what the difference was the devil said: " The fires in Capitalist hell are hot and burning bright ". "In Socialist hell it's very cold, because they have run out of coal".
OK, I won't quit my day job even though I'd like to, the way things are going.

Isn't Japan going through it's worst recession ever ? Didn't a Japanese electronics company just have it's biggest quarterly loss ever ? So where are those Wii Fits? I want one and I've got cash to pay for it too. Don't tell me to go on Ebay.That thing weighs 4 kilos and the shipping costs would be more than the item and those sellers are secondary, so where did they get
them ?
Besides if it breaks,I want to be able to go to a store and yell at somebody.

So much for Capitalism and consumer choice , blah, blah, blah. We are now living in some strange, quasi Socialist world . We are going to hell and we deserve it.

Snow

Got caught in the first snow on my way home from getting a flu shot. I put my glasses on to see the snow flakes on my coat, very pretty. I say that now but by the time February gets here, I won't think they look so great anymore.Too bad my camera isn't good enough to take some pictures of them.

I told a fib at the flu shot clinic They give you a sheet to fill out with a list of questions. I checked the No box for the question "Do you have an evolving, progressing, neurological disorder such as MS "(etc. etc) ? I'm not aware that MS evolves and as for progressing, it is very slowly. If I had said yes they wouldn't have given me a shot. It's my choice to get a shot and my funeral if it ends aggravating my symptoms (see yesterday's post) ..

Making some progress at work regarding my medical accommodation. Can't say too much right
now except it's funny sometimes how a bad experience can end up having a positive result.
I'll explain everything once there is a final resolution. I'm thinking before Christmas.

Not much else going on . I was annoyed watching the Big Three automakers begging for money. Pretty much admitting there isn't any competition between them and their cars are all
pretty much the same. Gee remember a few years ago when we were told we had to learn to compete in the global market place ? We had to get lean and mean ? What happened to that ?